


underneath, underneath

by Wildcard



Category: League of Legends
Genre: Epic Friendship, F/M, M/M, Multi, Pacific Rim AU, romance is understated
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-29 09:04:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15069815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wildcard/pseuds/Wildcard
Summary: PACIFIC RIM AUNot all stories end happily ever after.When a battle leaves Ezreal in no condition to drift, Lux becomes Talon's new drift partner. The only problem is, Talon still has Ezreal's memories in his mind. Can the three of them balance each other or is this drift doomed to fail?





	underneath, underneath

_Arcane Shadow_ , their Jaeger is called, and she’s a beauty to Ezreal’s eyes. The scientists from Zaun and Piltover who worked on her like to talk about how many engines each muscle strand has and her hextech core, but it’s her gauntlet and her blade that always catch Ezreal’s eye. On her left arm, she bears a gauntlet of blued steel that shoots three different sorts of bolts. Her right arm is a blade, grooved to let shots be fired down its center.

She is lethal and she is lovely; Ezreal stands and watches the mechanics swarm over her, only half-aware of his co-pilot coming up behind him.

“Looks like they’re nearly done with the repairs,” Talon remarks quietly, crossing his arms over the railing and leaning forward towards the Jaeger. Like Ezreal, he chafes for action and has spent the last week dragging Ezreal into the simulator to further perfect their drift. If it weren’t for the enforced rest periods, Ezreal thinks that his head would have more of Talon’s memories than his own by now.

“Two more days,” Ezreal answers and looks over his shoulder at Talon only to freeze, mouth gaping open. “What did you do to your hair?!”

“Mm? Oh. I cut it. Having the ponytail jabbing into me was getting annoying.” Talon reaches up as he speaks, brushing his hand over the back of his neck where his hair hangs in jagged, unevenly cut locks. It’s chopped short on the sides of his head in thick clumps that stick out in all directions and make Ezreal wince. Compared to _Arcane Shadow_ ’s beauty, Talon’s hair is a travesty.

Making up his mind, Ezreal grabs Talon by the hand and starts to briskly walk away from the docking bay.

“You’re not piloting her looking like that,” he says determinedly. “Did you cut it yourself? Don’t answer that, I can see you did. Come to my quarters, I’ll buzz it properly for you.”

“Nobody’s going to see me inside the cockpit anyway,” Talon protests.

“I’ll see you!”

“I’ll be wearing a helmet most of the time!”

“Talon. _Arcane Shadow_ does not deserve to have your hairstyle inflicted on her.” Under his breath, Ezreal mutters, _‘If you can even call that a hairstyle,’_ before continuing at a normal volume, “Now march!”

Either Ezreal’s words or sheer passion convince Talon; either way, Talon lets himself be led away with only a last wistful look at _Arcane Shadow._

* * *

 

  
Against the white sheets, Ezreal’s skin looks more golden than ever but he’s still too pale. He’s paler than the last time Lux saw him and it’s not only his condition that accounts for the pallor. He’s been spending too much time indoors, working on the neural link with Talon and practicing simulations instead of exploring.  
  
She listens to the beeping of the machines and watches the steady rise-fall of his chest. The charts before her tell her more than Talon can so she tunes out his awkward words and focuses on the information she is not supposed to have.  
  
When Talon’s voice trails off, she looks up. He’s paler too, shadows circling darkly under his eyes, and his hair is in limp, short locks that are plastered against his skull with sweat. The cast on his arm is glaringly white against his light brown skin. The thin hospital gown looks comical on him and he carries the IV stand with him as if it’s an impromptu weapon instead of the only thing keeping him from screaming in pain.  
  
“Go back to bed,” she says, sliding the charts back into the pocket at the foot of the bed. “It’ll be months before he wakes.”  
  
There are people who would think her cold for not feigning optimism, who would demand she deliver her news with a smile and a cheery attitude. There are expectations of Crownguards, now more than ever with the Kaiju overturning so much of the world.  
  
Talon simply nods and folds his arms over the side of Ezreal’s bed, resting his forehead against the mattress.  
  
“Too tired to walk back right now,” he says, voice muffled. “I’ll wait here until I can move.”  
  
“The nurses threatened to handcuff you to your bed if you kept leaving,” Lux reminds him as she sits down in the other chair.   
  
“Like I can’t pick locks,” Talon huffs. She regards the top of his head silently as Ezreal, unsmiling and still, lies between them.

* * *

“When Talon’s healed, I’ll be his new co-pilot,” Lux tells Viktor.   
  
Viktor doesn’t look up from his display, metal fingers plugged directly into the computer’s interface. “There are tests for compatibility. Ezreal was his top match - and you  _aren’t_ his second match.”  
  
“I know,” Lux says, hands flat on his desk. “And I’ll pass them. But I want you to start getting the Jaeger ready for us  _now.”_  
  
She codeswitches effortlessly, speaking his language instead.  
  
“Talon is a known unit and proven pilot. _Arcane Shadow_  is half his creation, half Ezreal’s. You will need to adjust the half that is Ezreal’s for his new pilot and if you know in advance who that will be, you will have a headstart on the changes to the Jaeger which will allow it to be operational sooner. Can you afford the delay?”  
  
“And if you two aren’t drift-compatible?” Viktor’s lit-up eyes glow in her direction, mask expressionless.  
  
“We will be,” Lux says, words clipped.  
  
“And I’m supposed to take that on  _faith_?” He sneers the word ‘faith’ as if it’s the most obscene of concepts, a violation so vile that he can hardly bear to speak of it, and Lux smiles. He’s walked right into her trap.  
  
“No. You’re supposed to trust my calculations. Talon has been drifting with Ezreal for months now. Ezreal was in Talon’s mind, screaming and hurt, during the long trip back to shore when  _Arcane Shadow_  went down. Your initial data is flawed – whomever Talon was compatible with before he had Ezreal in his mind is no longer whom he is compatible with. Anyone drifting with Talon now will have to drift with Ezreal’s ghost as well.”   
  
She leans forwards just a little, blond hair swinging over her shoulders and framing her face with gold. “Don’t look at Talon’s top matches. Cross-compare his top matches with Ezreal’s and look at the matches they have in common. Look who is at the top of  _that_  list.”  
  
The display flashes, dividing into two columns of bronze, and names scroll quickly past. When a name lit up in red shows in both columns, Viktor looks back up at her. He doesn’t argue any further, just gives a brisk nod; his own pride has never mattered as much as being  _right_.  
  
“What changes do you have in mind for  _Arcane Shadow_?” Viktor asks and Lux makes herself smile again as she pulls out a sheet of paper from her backpack.  
  
“Here. And her name is now  _Shadow Spark_.”   
  
Arcane was gone and Shadow was moved into first place because Talon had been here before Lux had. She planned the name out as meticulously as everything else.

* * *

When they drift, Talon’s mind slides against hers like metal against a sharpening stone. It’s not the easy fluidity that comes when siblings drift, the flow she is used to from her practice drifts with Garen. It’s a hard pressure, two sets of memories in Talon’s minds threading into their shared consciousness.  
  
_{through Ezreal’s eyes, she is beautiful, she is blinding, she is the sun and she is summer and she is a perfect peerless cloudless sky. he sees her and he loves her and he doesn’t see her at all because  goddesses have no flaws and he–_  
  
_–looks at her with suspicion, this Demacian girl with the bright smile and even brighter eyes, this woman who wields her smile like a scythe, who cuts people down with words and sparks magic from nails bitten down to the quick, Talon knows better than to believe beauty is goodness and–_  
  
_–she sees a genius boy who grew up all alone, she sees an adventurer who takes himself to the spaces that other humans vacated so long ago, she sees someone who is so much more vulnerable than he will ever understand, someone who–_  
  
_–looks at her and sees the siren skinned, sees the danger that Demacia made her into, a man with blood eyes and bloodied hands, someone who will not be swayed by her smile and who will always see the worst of her, the–_  
  
_–killer, assassin, someone who loves blades better than people, the epitome of Noxus, some boy who slaughtered his way out of the gutters, his co-pilot, his drift-compatible partner, a man with memories of torture and trauma–_  
  
_–looks at this golden boy, this summer child who thinks he can think his way out of everything, who thinks he’s so much better than everyone else, steel through the heart ends everyone, looks at his smile and wonders if he himself has ever been able to smile so freely–}_  
  
“When Ezreal sees inside your head,” Talon says above the sound of the scientist announcing ‘neural handshake completed’, “He’s going to be so disappointed to know what you thought of him at first.”  
  
“Were you disappointed by his thoughts about you?” Lux asks and doesn’t touch the first part of Talon’s sentence.   
  
“Only that he wasn’t scared,” Talon says, quirking a half-smile at her as he stretches out his left arm. Her left arm stretches as well, automatic and unthinking, and Lux exhales. They’re halfway there.

* * *

 _Shadow Spark_  performs well. Ezreal’s heavy gauntlet is gone, leaving the left arm lighter than the right; Lux uses it to shoot lasers, arms it with a plasma cannon and gives it an unfolding staff that she can use if it runs out of power for the cannons.  
  
_Lux_  performs well but she knows everyone is comparing  _Shadow Spark_  to  _Arcane Shadow_ ; she knows everyone is whispering about how she swooped down on  _Arcane Shadow_  and had her gutted, had her changed, while Talon was still in hospital so she could present him with a  _fait accompli._  
  
As if Talon hadn’t been part of it. As if he hadn’t plotted with her.   
  
It’s a little harder to play the ingenue now, but she needs to keep Talon’s reputation spotless. Nobody will dare raise a hand to a Crownguard, especially with Garen drifting with Prince Jarvan, but Talon has never collected allies like Lux has. The Jaeger pilots are still human and if they should circle on Talon, if they should take him to task for being so disloyal as to drift with Lux while Ezreal still lies sleeping in the hospital…  
  
Someone will die, and the Jaeger corps cannot have a pilot who has murdered another pilot. Talon will be expelled from the program.  
  
She doesn’t bother explaining this to Talon; he saw her plan in her mind the first time they drifted and he knows she’s not done yet.

* * *

Ezreal wakes. Talon sees him first, then Lux.  
  
When she enters, he’s still lying down, still pale, but his eyes are open and have lost none of their intensity.   
  
“Tal told me the plan,” he says before she can even greet him. “I’m in. What do you need me to do?”  
  
She smiles without meaning to and feels her eyes sting with tears.“Get better,” she says, voice a little shaky. “Get better as fast as you can. The only part of my plan that I couldn’t control was  _you_.”  
  
The only thing she couldn’t guarantee was that Ezreal would wake.

* * *

Viktor’s fingers still over the blueprints he’s examining when he sees Lux enter.   
  
“Something wrong with Shadow Spark?” He asks, mechanical voice rasping lower than usual.  
  
“Yes. I need you to outfit her like you did  _Kinkou Balance_.”   
  
“So Ezreal’s awoken at last,” Viktor says with something akin to smugness in his tone. He pulls out a drawer and tosses her a small USB; Lux catches it reflexively, cupped hands flying up. “I knew you would ask for that. The three of you can look at that and see what changes you need made.”  
  
“…Thank you.” Lux snaps him a sharp salute, just for the fun of it, then turns and leaves. The steady clack of her heels against the tiled floor soon turns into a rapider rhythm as she runs down the tunnels. Viktor knew what she wanted and he’s giving her permission. She’d anticipated more of an argument, protests that she’d be better off looking for a different partner so they could have two Jaegers instead of one, but she’s not going to complain about something coming easily for once. For once!  
  
Shen, Akali and Kennen might be the first three-person team to pilot a Jaeger but  _Golden Blade_  will leave them in the dust _._  
  
This, too, is part of her plan.


End file.
